Sergeant York Quotes

Walter Brennan (1894–1974) is considered one of the finest character actors in motion picture history. His three supporting actor Oscars were awarded for his roles in Come and Get It (1936), Kentucky (1938), and The Westerner (1940). He was nominated a fourth time for Sergeant York (1941).

You're mistaking this period when every nut is an individualist for a period of individualism. Wilson has only been powerful when he has represented; he's had to compromise over and over again. Just as soon as Trotsky and Lenin take a definite, consistent stand they'll become merely two-minute figures like Kerensky. Even Foch hasn't half the significance of Stonewall Jackson. War used to be the most individualistic pursuit of man, and yet the popular heroes of the war had neither authority nor responsibility: Guynemer and Sergeant York. How could a schoolboy make a hero of Pershing? A big man has no time really to do anything but just sit and be big.

No-knock entries are dangerous for everyone involved—cops, suspects, bystanders. The raids usually occur before dawn; the residents are usually asleep, and then disoriented by the sudden intrusion. There is no warning, and sleepy residents may not always understand that the men breaking down their door are police. At the same time, police procedures allow terribly little room for error. Stan Goff, a retired Special Forces sergeant and SWAT trainer, says that he teaches cops to “Look at hands. If there’s a weapon in their hands during a dynamic entry, it does not matter what that weapon is doing. If there’s a weapon in their hands, that person dies. It’s automatic.” On September 13, 2000, the DEA, FBI, and local police conducted a series of raids throughout Modesto, California. By the end of the day, they had shot and killed an eleven-year-old boy, Alberto Sepulveda, as he was lying facedown on the floor with his arms outstretched, as ordered by police. In January 2011, police in Farmington, Massachusetts similarly shot Eurie Stamp, a sixty-eight-year-old grandfather, as he lay motionless on the floor according to police instructions. In the course of a May 2014 raid in Cornelia, Georgia, a flash-bang grenade landed in the crib of a nineteen-month-old infant. The explosion blew a hole in the face and chest of Bounkham Phonesavanh (“Baby Bou Bou”), covering his body with third degree burns, and exposing part of his ribcage. No guns or drugs were found in the house, and no arrests were made. Sometimes these raids go wrong before they even begin. Walter and Rose Martin, a perfectly innocent couple, both in their eighties, had their home raided by New York Police more than fifty times between 2002 and 2010. It turned out that their address had been entered as the default in the police database.

No disrespect, Sergeant Major, but you can kiss my big, black, New York ass!

Geraldine Steel is back for her tenth case. Reunited in York with her former sergeant, Ian Peterson, she discovers that her tendency to bend the rules has consequences. The tables have turned, and now he’s the boss. When two people are murdered, their only connection lies buried in the past. As police search for the

On the eve of America’s entrance into World War II, Walter Brennan embodied fundamental decency and democratic virtues that made him indispensable to Cooper’s signature Everyman roles. Brennan’s performance in Sergeant York (September 27, 1941) foreshadows the country’s emergence from isolationism into a reluctant, then confirmed internationalism. Although Brennan received an Academy Award nomination for his work in Sergeant York, his low-key style is barely mentioned in later accounts of the film, which focus on Gary Cooper as Alvin York, a backwoods Tennessee conscientious objector who overcomes religious objections to war to become the nation’s greatest war hero. Brennan’s Pastor Pile persuades York to fight for his principles, to abide by the law and register for the draft, and then to serve in the army after he is denied conscientious objector status.

Brennan’s third Academy Award for his performance in The Westerner was announced during the making of Sergeant York. To the actor’s surprise, no one on the set said anything to him when he arrived. “I didn’t expect the gang to fall all over me, but I did anticipate some congratulations,” Walter said. “When nobody said a word I was first surprised, then hurt, and finally mad.” Then he walked into his dressing room packed with flowers; a huge green 3 had been painted on his flower wreathed mirror.

The next day I was driven down to New York City to take the physical. It was one of the strangest things I’d ever seen. Several hundred young men, maybe even a thousand, in their skivvies, walking around an enormous room, all of us lost, dazed, and confused. Some of these guys had dodged the draft and were there under the watchful eyes of dozens of federal marshals lined up against one of the walls. After eight hours of being poked, prodded, stuck, and poked again, I was given a large red envelope. I had been rejected. I had the respiratory problems of an old man, high blood pressure, partial loss of hearing, very bad teeth, very flat, very wide feet and I tested positive for tuberculosis. “Frankly,” the doctor said, “I don’t know how the hell you’re even standing up,” and that was when the sergeant told me that if they bottled everything that was wrong with me “we could take over the world without a shot.

In 1947 Cuba, clandestently Meyer Lansky acted as a go-between, establishing a cooperative atmosphere between Batista and the Mob. Both Lansky and Batista were outsiders to the Sicilian-run criminal organization, but they both were ambitious and had greed as a common value. This unholy alliance continued as long as Batista’s interests coincided with the interests of the Mafia. During a meeting at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City, Batista offered Meyer Lansky control of the racetracks and casinos in Havana if he would help him return to the Cuban presidency. Now that the Mafia could clearly see the potential Havana had to offer, they decided to move ahead on the racketeering venture in Cuba. Batista became an important part of the complicated puzzle. Although the former Sergeant/Colonel had lived in exile, he finagled his return to power as a Senator, providing the Mafia with a way of openly buying their way into Cuba. Meetings between Batista and Meyer Lansky provided them both with a common goal. The planning for a territorial takeover began, with both men maneuvering to improve their advantage. Lansky figured out how to make money and Batista offered him his cooperation and protection in return… depending of course, on Batista’s return to the Presidency. Read the award winning book “The Exciting Story of Cuba,” page 205

Shortly after midnight on September 7, 1776, a young Army sergeant named Ezra Lee climbed into a tiny one-man submarine, pulled the hatch shut over his head, and submerged beneath the waters of New York harbor.  His target was HMS Eagle, a sixty-four–gun man-of-war that served as the flagship of the British fleet.  (In a tiny stroke of irony, the British Admiral Lord Howe had anchored Eagle within a few hundred yards of Bedloe’s Island, which would one day be renamed Liberty Island—the site for the Statue of Liberty.)

CASE STUDY In 2012, investigators were trying to understand why supermarkets in the United States were being robbed every month of Tide detergent – and only Tide detergent. As with every investigation, they ‘followed the money’ only to find that Tide was the money. Bottles of Tide had become an ad hoc street currency, with 150-ounce bottles being exchanged for $5 or $10 worth of drugs, earning it the nickname ‘Liquid Gold’. As New York magazine pointed out: ‘this unlikely black market would not have formed if they weren’t so good at pushing their product’.37 It turns out that despite being considered a ‘low interest category’, people have very strong feelings about their detergents. Tide came in the top three brands that consumers were least likely to give up during tough times. This bond has allowed the producer, Procter & Gamble, to charge 50 per cent more than the average detergent and yet it still outsells its nearest competitor, which is also produced by P&G, by more than two to one. So, what is it about Tide that means more people will pay 50 per cent more for a functionally parity product from the same manufacturer? The investigating sergeant puts it well: ‘I’m a No. 1 Tide fan’, he says. ‘I don’t know if it’s all psychological, but you can tell the difference.’38

Now he laughs for real, cackling with the wicked innocence of the bright and easily bored. Staff Sergeant David Dime is a twenty-four-year-old college dropout from North Carolina who subscribes to the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Maxim, Wired, Harper’s, Fortune, and DicE Magazine, all of which he reads in addition to three or four books a week, mostly used textbooks on history and politics that his insanely hot sister sends from Chapel Hill. There are stories that he went to college on a golf scholarship, which he denies. That he was a star quarterback in high school, which he claims not to remember, though one day a football surfaced at FOB Viper, and Dime, caught up in the moment, perhaps, nostalgia triggering some long-dormant muscle memory, uncorked a sixty-yard spiral that sailed over Day’s head into the base motor pool.

She had become reconciled to the idea of an eternal shadow; she discovered that, far from being a threat, her bodyguards were much wiser sounding boards than many of the gentleman courtiers who fluttered around her. Police officers like Sergeant Allan Peters and Inspector Graham Smith became avuncular father figures, defusing tricky situations and deflating overweening subjects alike with a joke or a crisp command. They also brought her mothering instincts to the fore. She remembered their birthdays, sent notes of apology to their wives when they had to accompany her on an overseas tours and ensured that they were “fed and watered” when she went out with them from Kensington Palace. When Graham Smith contracted cancer, she invited him and his wife on holiday to Necker in the Caribbean and also on a Mediterranean cruise on board the yacht owned by Greek tycoon, John Latsis. Such is her affection for this popular police officer that she arranged a dinner in his honour after he had recovered which was attended by her family. If she is dining with friends at San Lorenzo, her favourite restaurant, her current detective, Inspector Ken Wharfe will often join her table at the end of the meal and regale the assembled throng with his jokes. Perhaps she reserves her fondest memories for Sergeant Barry Mannakee who became her bodyguard at a time when she felt lost and alone in the royal world. He sensed her bewilderment and became a shoulder for her to lean on and sometimes to cry on during this painful period. The affectionate bond that built up between them did not go unnoticed either by Prince Charles nor Mannakee’s colleagues. Shortly before the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of York in July 1986 he was transferred to other duties, much to Diana’s dismay. In the following spring he was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident.